PC Watch reveals Intel Centrino roadmap

Got it right before

Intel's Pentium M chip, part of its Centrino mobile platform, will rise to 1.7GHz in June and 1.8GHz by the end of the year, according to a roadmap described by Japanese Web site PC Watch.

Usually, we'd take these things with a pinch of salt, but PC Watch was the first to reveal the Pentium M's ancillary chipsets, Odem and Montara, now known, post launch, as the 855PM and the 855GM.

PC Watch claims the june launch will be accompanied by a 1.2GHz Low-voltage Pentium M and a 1GHz Ultra-low voltage Pentium M. Currently, these parts top out at 1.1GHz and 900MHz, respectively.

Intel has already announced Dothan, the current Pentium M's successor, and said that it will ship in the second half of the year and be fabbed at 90nm. Dothan, adds PC Watch, will operate at 1.8GHz and contain 2MB of L2 cache. Its frontside bus frequency will be 533MHz. It will ship in Q4.

In the same timeframe, Intel will ship more advanced Montara chipsets, the GM+ and the GT, branded the 855GME and the 855GT, and with 250MHz and 260MHz core frequencies, respectively.

The first quarter of 2004 will see Dothan rise to 1.9GHz, and the arrival of Low-voltage and Ultra-low voltage parts running at 1.3GHz and 1.1GHz, the site claims. They will be accompanied by the Alviso-GM chipset, bringing DDR 2 and PCI Express 16x to the table.

We'll also see the first Pentium M-derived Celeron part, based on the 1.3GHz part Intel launched last week, but fabbed not at 0.13 micron but 0.09 micron.

Further out, says PC Watch, in 2005, the 90nm Merom chip will be paired with the Crestine-GM chipset. In 2006, Merom's successor, Gilo, will appear based on a 65nm process.

Meanwhile, Intel will continue to evolve its Calexico wireless LAN card, with a 802.11b/g dual-band card in Q4, and a tri-band a/b/g part, Calexico 2, in Q1 2004. ®